Canada’s Wildfires, OPEC Oil Report, NATO’s Largest Air Drill, and More Podcast

MCMAHON:
In the coming week, Canada fights wildfires that have shrouded the northeastern U.S. in smog. OPEC releases its closely watched monthly oil report. And, NATO holds its largest ever air defense exercise. It’s June 8th, 2023 and time for The World Next Week.

I’m Bob McMahon.

ROBBINS:
And I’m Carla Ann Robbins. Bob, let’s start by talking about the air. Lots of the east coast and the northern states have been blanketed with these thick clouds of smoke and these eerie orange skies. It’s pretty awful here in New York where I am right now and I gather it’s the same in DC. This is all being blown down, as you said, from major wildfires in Canada. Are the Canadians getting these fires under control? And I suppose more important, is there any signs that this is going to give a boost to climate policies?

MCMAHON:
Yes, very important topic that one hopes this spurs. But, we should first just recap what’s going on right now and what’s in store the week ahead. Yes, Canada is in the throes of fighting these wildfires. Canada gets wildfires every spring, as do other parts of the world, but these are more intense and they are more intense, by the consensus of the scientific community, because of human caused climate change. Canada at the moment, according to officials in the province of Quebec, there are 414 wildfires burning. 239 of which are determined to be out of control. According to officials in Quebec, they have the ability to fight forty fires at the same time, but there are many more than that ongoing. There is a problem with the ability to just fight these fires, first and foremost, to get them under control and then to deal with the smoke that’s caused by them.

Due to an anomaly of nature, the smoke normally gets blown northward. It is getting blown southerly from a wind coming from the north. It has pushed it, very unusually, down into heavily populated U.S. cities. This is getting a huge amount of attention, that these fires, that these springtime fires, especially in Quebec and in densely forested areas of the maritime provinces normally wouldn’t get. Now, we should note in the West where we’re used to hearing about such fires including Canada’s northwest, they have had a series of intensifying fires in recent years. California, in particular though, benefited from an enormous amount of rain and snow in recent months and so they are looking at a different situation. We might hear later in the year though about a problem driven by the vegetation that was sprouted by all that water. But, that’s for another podcast, Carla. This one is about the ongoing fires of the moment.

Canada is getting a good deal of aid from the U.S. Other provinces are sending firefighters to help. France, Portugal, Spain, Mexico have all lent aid. The hope is that the Canada can get these under control, that the winds will change, that a variety of things will happen to end this very eerie period that we find ourselves in. Canada, also, we should note, Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal have all faced the smoke, as well. It is a very much a concern of theirs, but now they have their very large neighbor to the south seized of the moment.

And then onto your bigger question, Carla. We don’t know whether this is going to cause any sort of change in the debate that has been rather frustrating in the U.S. in terms of policy that can affirmatively change the amount of fossil fuel emissions that are determined to be the cause of the heat trapping gases that is leading to this condition. It is a multiple phase problem. Carbon emissions are not abating. They are continuing to trend high. The country… there’s a fraught battle anytime states or the federal government tries to take up this issue with any sort of consistency. Possibly, it’s a debate that’s gone with the wind or that this may be build something.

ROBBINS:
I thought it was really interesting that, if I were President Biden, I would use this moment to try to leverage more of a discussion on climate change. For the longest time, whenever there were extreme weather events, scientists would say, “You can’t attribute any one particular weather event to climate change.” But, those are gone. All people who study climate say extreme weather, extreme events like this are directly related to climate change. Why do you think the politicians, including someone like Biden who pressed for all this green money, why do you think he’s not out there right now pushing it?

MCMAHON:
I don’t know and I don’t rule out that he won’t take up the cause. It just seems like a natural and I think at this point he could also seize on something we’ve seen emerging in the state of California, which is major insurers not ensuring homeowners. This is something that occurred completely separately of the Canadian wildfires and of this moment of climate debate, which was insurance companies, very mindful of the bottom line, just saw it as too expensive to underwrite homeowners in California given the risks that are involved there. This is directly related to climate change induced risks. 

I think if you get into a cost benefit analysis and insurers start doing this in multiple places, then it’s maybe the issue of the costs involved in switching from carbon to renewable fuels isn’t so onerous after all, if you’re talking about the costs involved in rebuilding communities or in retrofitting communities to deal with things like the smog we’re seeing this week. Or rebuilding communities hammered by hurricanes of an intensity we have never seen before. These are the kinds of debates that you would hope that would be driven at the federal level as well as at other levels. Certainly, there are some in the climate interested community in the U.S. and elsewhere that are trying to hit home on this. 

And if you get the U.S. involved in a lead function, as we’ve said before, it helps to focus a debate internationally. I think one of the hopes is that, here we are about six months out from the next COP meeting, which is usually a fraught exercise, this one particular because it’s based in the Gulf in a fossil fuel producing country. One hopes that this will then drive some further debate about how is the world going to start to take on this issue and look at the root causes so that we have fewer of these. Even understanding that any vigorous action that begins at this moment is not going to mitigate some of the intense weather we’re going to see.

What we’ve seen with the smog in New York, for example, with not only the eerie Mars-like atmosphere, but the canceling of sports events, flights changed, all sorts of events altered, changed, canceled, whatever, and the health impact that we will not know for a while. And again, the longer this kind of air sticks around, the worse it is for health, especially for people who are vulnerable to it as well as developing conditions of asthma and children and everything else. All of these are things that nobody was thinking about a week ago when this smoke was not blowing down into the U.S. But, it’s now something that has to be part of the planning going forward because these fires are going to continue. There’s no sign that, whether it’s this year and maybe it’s a later summer version of this we get, or in future springs or whatever, there was no planning for this. There was no contingency in place. I think it’s the type of thing that states and the federal government are going to have to be seized of.

ROBBINS:
At least, we all have our masks. Our COVID masks back. I put mine on today when I walked over to the studio.

MCMAHON:
Everybody had produced their KN95 and other masks. A lot of people have become familiar with the EPA’s app, AirNow, to detect what different color codes for the air quality are. New York, I think yesterday, charted out as the worst air in the world beating out New Delhi and other places that are typically near the top of that dubious list. This is something that now, I think, people need to be aware of and it’s not just a momentary thing. 

Carla, a lot of this has to do with oil and OPEC happens to have an important monthly oil market report coming up that is going to be closely watched for trends and outlooks because oil dependency is not going anywhere, certainly in the near future. OPEC has had a lot to consider the past year, given how much Russia’s war in Ukraine disrupted the oil market. What should we be looking for in this month’s report, Carla?

ROBBINS:
Bob, unfortunately, the world isn’t weaning itself from oil fast enough, which has a lot to do with all we’re talking about with these climate disasters. And given our continued addiction, these reports tell us a lot about the state of global economics and about geopolitics. Not to make light of it. It also could help our summer vacation planning. A little bit of background first. In the months after the Russians invaded Ukraine, global oil prices spiked. Brent Crude, which is the benchmark, topped 130 a barrel up from seventy-eight a barrel in January of ’22. But, these prices have dropped steadily since. And on Wednesday, yesterday, Brent Crude closed at about $75 a barrel mainly because of economic slowdowns in the U.S.-Europe, and China. 

OPEC+, which is OPEC plus another ten countries, that group formed in 2016, produces about 40 percent of the world’s oil. And they’ve been trying their hardest to drive up prices ever since with a series of production cuts. In October, right before the U.S. midterms, you’ll remember, and right after a very direct appeal by President Biden to the Saudis not to raise prices, the group decided to cut 2 million barrels a day. The White House was furious and suggested the group was enabling Russia’s actions in Ukraine. Then again in April, eight members of OPEC+ announced they were taking another 1.6 million barrels per day off the market. And when they met this past weekend in Vienna, they decided, after a pretty rancorous meeting, to continue those earlier production cuts. The Saudis who are very eager for more cash to fund those development projects: you’ve seen all those ads for that enormous golden high-tech cube they want to build in Riyadh and lots of other, what are referred to as, these giga-projects.

They decide to cut their own production by another million barrels a day. Global daily oil production is around a hundred million barrels. So far, after each of these announced reduction, prices rise, but then settle back to pre-Ukraine prices. There’s good news for consumers and lower per barrel prices. It means lower gasoline pump prices, which has been averaging about 3.55 a gallon in the U.S., down more than a quarter from a year ago. And lower energy prices help reduce inflation. But, the impact on the global climate is really grim, as the smoke from Canada’s wildfires reminded us. 

And the lower the prices, unfortunately, the less immediate incentives for countries and companies to shift away from fossil fuels. Bob, you made a really good point, that there’s enormous cost to this. But, in the near term, all that companies look at is oil is cheap and it’s cheaper than thinking about renewables when in reality that the cost for the country, for the world, for individuals are much, much higher here. But, we’re in a time of really cheap oil. Everyone’s going to be looking at this price and OPEC’s going to be looking at it and saying, “Let’s try to figure out another way to raise prices.” That’s really where the tension is.

MCMAHON:
Carla, let me talk about the OPEC+ group, which includes Russia. What’s the dynamic, I guess, between the Russians and the Saudis as this report comes out?

ROBBINS:
There is this ongoing fight between the Russians and the Saudis who are probably, right now, the two biggest players in OPEC+. While we accuse the Russians of evading oil sanctions, the Saudis have accused the Russians of not living up to their production commitments. Actually, increasing exports even as OPEC+ agrees to reducing productions. The Russians have not published their energy production data since April. But, other import data suggests that what the Saudis have charged is true. But, the Russians and Saudis have really different interests right now.

The Saudis want these higher prices and a stable market to support these ambitious development projects. The IMF estimates they need close to $81 a barrel. Moscow just wants to sell as much oil as it can to finance the war and its sanctions battered economy. But even if global prices rise, which is what the Saudis want, it isn’t going to get as much benefit as everybody else is because of that price cap. There’s a debate about how airtight the cap is that the G7 impose. But, it seems to be squeezing the Russian economy. You have two really different interests. The Saudis want to produce less because they want to drive up the prices and the Russians just want to produce as much as they possibly can because their prices are capped.

MCMAHON:
That’s one element of this report and the OPEC decision making going on. What about the U.S.-Saudi dynamic? We just had a visit of Secretary of State Blinken with the Saudis. They were said to be frank and comprehensive.

ROBBINS:
Fair and frank conversations as they always say, yes.

MCMAHON:
No fist bumps that I could discern from the meeting. But anything else, any other takeaways that are relevant you think?

ROBBINS:
It’s so interesting. Once again, this is why watching oil prices is so intriguing here. Last summer, Biden really had to suck it up and go to Saudi Arabia, a place he had previously called a pariah state, to ask MBS, the crown prince, to increase oil production. That’s when he fist bumped the prince, much to everybody’s horror. Now with oil prices down, the focus on this conversation is much less about the price of oil and a lot more about potentially trying to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, human rights issues, and stability in the Gulf. That’s much more the focus of this Blinken visit. A great deal of conversation whether or not the Saudis are going to, in any near term, in the Saudi mind reward the Biden administration by normalizing relations with Israel. The Saudis want an awful lot for that. They’re talking about security guarantees, more weapons sales, and technology for civilian nuclear program, including uranium enrichment technology, something we were talking about last week. That makes arms control advocates very nervous.

Interestingly enough, as much as the Saudis welcome Blinken, they are playing the field rather aggressively. Two days after Blinken’s visit, Riyadh is going to host a major Arab-Chinese investment conference. And on Wednesday, even as Blinken was meeting with the Saudi foreign minister, MBS, as the Saudis very much noted, spoke by phone with Putin and supposedly praised their OPEC+ cooperation. Nobody really believes that they’re happy with each other. But, the fact that they went out of their way to announce this, as Blinken was there, was a finger in the eye. No fist bump.

MCMAHON:
Speaking of fist bumps, to use a sporting analogy, there’s a bit of sport washing going on with the Saudis as well and a U.S. dynamic we can add as well. Again, nothing to do with the Blinken visit. But, an interesting amount of things playing out there where you have the Saudi-backed league now seems to be merging with the PGA Golf Tournament, which is a major deal and a major coup really for the Saudis. But, also one of the world’s most renowned soccer players, Lionel Messi, is going to not play in Saudi Arabia for hundreds of millions, but in Miami. A bit of a coup for the U.S. there.

ROBBINS:
As someone who lived in Miami for a really long time, I can say, “Yay, Miami.: The Saudi golf thing is really interesting. Mainly, I personally don’t watch golf, it’s a little bit like watching paint dry as far as I’m concerned. But, I will say that, from what I can tell from reading about it, is that the Saudi deal got a lot more coverage as well as the Messi thing. A lot more coverage on the front page of Saudi newspapers than the Blinken visit which was hidden inside, which is also another dis to the United States right now.

MCMAHON:
We should say, an official Saudi press controlled by the Saudi regime.

ROBBINS:
That is really what Saudi newspapers are.

MCMAHON:
Yes. Just clarifying that.

ROBBINS:
Right. Bob, let’s move to Europe, which has a lot more independent press, thankfully. Next Monday, Germany will host the Air Defender 23 exercise, which I gather is the biggest air exercise in NATO’s history with some 10,000 troops, 250 aircraft from two dozen NATO members as well as Sweden, the NATO aspirant, and Japan. This is certainly a coming out party for Germany, the ultimate NATO free-rider. What else are you going to be watching?

MCMAHON:
It’s something that’s been in the planning for a number of years, I think since 2018 even. It has huge resonance, obviously. The planning was hastened by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. While there has been some careful language about noting the prevalence or the fact that this drill is happening in proximity to Russia, some officials have come right out and just said, “Russia needs to watch this very carefully to show how prepared NATO is going to be.” Germany hosting this is important. It was not too long ago, it was all about the Leopard watch. The German Leopard tanks were being bandied about as a possible offering to Ukraine. In fact, Ukraine is going to acquire them. They’re apparently working to integrate them into their defenses, as we speak. And that was a big deal for the Germans. Germany has been offering a lot of other aid, as well.

Far beyond, I think, long forgotten is the offer of German helmets to troops in the field as their first gesture. And Germany has offered a lot more than that. In addition to people like German Foreign Minister Baerbock has been very strong in their denunciation of Russia repeatedly. Germany hosting this is a big deal. NATO setting itself up as a defense organization and stressing the defense nature of these maneuvers is also very important. They’re talking strenuously about not allowing one inch of NATO soil to be violated and so forth. Given what Russia has going on, it’s hands full with Ukraine and all sorts of other developments on those fronts. I don’t think NATO soil is under threat at the moment.

But, the invasion triggered a great deal of concern in NATO and a great deal of existential concern from some of the newer NATO members, especially the Baltic nations who don’t have their own air forces among other things and so will rely on things like the ability of NATO to scramble to their assistance, if need be. I believe the NATO exercises are taking place over a swath of the Baltic and North Seas. Even altering some flight patterns of civilian flights and making sure that there’s coordination there because again, this type of exercise has not been held before. It’s an important moment. We’ve talked before about the so-called German Zeitenwende. It’s a real thing and it’s important for them to be hosting this and for NATO to provide this demonstration effect. The maneuvers are scheduled, I believe, from June 12th to 23.

ROBBINS:
Have the Russians said anything about this? It seems like we’re less concerned, week by week, about how much we’re going to provoke Putin. The latest conversation, of course, is giving the Ukraine F-16s. You mentioned the Leopards. For the longest time, it was like, “Don’t give them tanks, it’s going to provoke Putin too much.” Something as simple, I suppose, as an Air Defense exercises probably not even of a concern. But, maybe we should be watching to see how the Russians respond.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, I have not seen any sort of consistent response from Russia as of yet. One thing we might be looking for is the proximity of Russian military planes when these exercises occur. Russian military craft have been known to buzz NATO airspace and engage in some provocative action. I think that’s not something we can rule out and something to watch very closely. These exercises are going to be taking place two to four hours a day. That’s a time period to watch really closely. And NATO assuredly will be watching very closely to see if there’s any sort of Russian show that they’re aware of this and that they’re not concerned by it. But, I think as has been repeatedly said, nothing gave NATO such a boost in recent years as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which was supposed to be about stopping the spread of NATO and the threat to Russian territorial integrity and so on.

As I also said, Russia’s got its hand full with Ukraine. I think we’ll be talking a little bit more about that soon. Including ongoing infighting involving its own paramilitary forces, the Wagner group, and recriminations involving the way its military has performed. They’ve tried to change the narrative a bit on this fighting to that, from “Ukrainians are Nazis and they’re the threat” to, “We’re fighting against NATO in this war in Ukraine, and that’s why everybody needs to step up and get enlisted in this.” It does play into the narrative now that the Russian government has taken up domestically. But, it’s also a reason why you’re going to see NATO trying to very carefully stage these as a defensive type of operations and basically make sure the Kremlin gets the message.

ROBBINS:
It’ll be interesting also to see whether there is any discussion about genuine burden sharing. Yes, it’s the German coming out party. But, one of the big questions going into the NATO Summit in July is how much progress they’ve made since Madrid, last year’s summit, on apportioning responsibility. There’s lots of talk about hundreds of thousands more troops having more responsibility, that they’re forward deployments, and everybody’s going to have their own notion as well as this question about whether they’re going to raise the percentage of GDP commitments, the defense investment pledges. This, I suppose, is we’ve got all these countries there allegedly bringing their planes. Big part of them are Americans. We’ll see whether this is a way going into Vilnius to show that the rest of NATO is getting its act together, or once again, this is mainly an American show with a little bit of embroidery from the rest of NATO.

MCMAHON:
No, it’s a really good point. It’s worth also noting that you have at least a couple of recalcitrant NATO members in Turkey, which has defense deals going on with Russia and with Hungary, which has tried to block various actions counter to Russia. We should say mostly on the EU front. But, Hungary has also been known to speak out against certain steps that it sees as too strongly against the Russian government in denouncing them and so forth. But, also the newest member, Finland, is highly capable. And Sweden, if it passes through its final approval from Turkey into full NATO endorsement and new membership can be expected to add a lot to NATO’s capabilities. There is this point that you mentioned though, which is how much are these countries, at the end of the day, willing to devote from their GDP towards defense spending that’ll make them more capable. It’s moved. But, it hasn’t moved as quickly as some might have hoped. 

Germany, among others, which is a country everybody’s watching closely, is dealing with a recession. It’s just had two straight quarters of declining growth, which is considered to be a recession. How much is that going to put pressure on its ability to outlay more for defense at this moment despite the very serious trauma going on next door or nearby in Ukraine? 

The audience figure of the week is highly relevant to this discussion, so let’s carry it forward, Carla. Our audience chose this week, through our Instagram story, the figure, “Ukrainian Kakhovka Dam Destroyed.” Carla, can you tell us what this refers to?

ROBBINS:
This destruction of this Russian controlled hydroelectric dam on the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine is along one of the front lines in the war. It released just an incredible torrent of water. These pictures were extraordinary. It has also set off an extraordinary human and environmental disaster. We have to caution that any numbers released in the early days of a disaster like this are always less than reliable. And you throw in the fact that this is in the midst of a war in which you have a disaster on both sides of a conflict, so the numbers are going to be even less reliable. But, here’s some of what we are hearing. The governor of Kherson region said they are 230 square miles underwater. An estimated 40,000 people may have been displaced. Some 16,000 on the Ukrainian side and the rest on the Russian side.

In some parts of the city of Kherson, which is about thirty miles below the dam, waters have risen about ten feet above normal. There are tens of thousands of people or more reportedly have lost access to clean drinking water. This is also an incredibly important agricultural region. Supposedly, 25,000 acres of farmland flooded. The impact between the loss of irrigation, chemicals seeping into the soil, and even landmines floating down river is expected to be devastating on agricultural production.

The cause of the dam’s collapse is not clear. Ukraine has blamed Russian terrorists for supposed explosion in an engine room. The Russians have claimed that Ukrainian forces have carried out sabotage. There’s also a chance that the dam gave way after months of shelling, because this is a region of conflict. 

If there’s any good news so far, and there really isn’t any, we’re apparently not looking at a nuclear disaster. The reservoir supplied cooling water to the Zaporizhzia nuclear power plant, one we’ve talked about a lot. It’s Europe’s largest, which is under Russia’s control. Ukrainian officials and officials from the IAEA have said there’s a separate pool there and there’s no immediate risk of a meltdown. The floodwaters are about to stop rising, and if so, we’ll only begin to see the full extent of the damage as the water recedes.

MCMAHON:
Carla, I understand that it’s hard to assign blame at this point. There’s a lot of supposition, in some ways, similar to when the Nord Stream pipeline explosion occurred, that we talked about last year. And there’s been some murky reporting that there were Ukrainian saboteurs responsible for that. In this case, you had a-

ROBBINS:
Something Zelenskyy denied again this week, forcefully.

MCMAHON:
Something he denied forcefully, right. It certainly, on the surface, one could argue that this incident happening at this juncture does disrupt the much anticipated Ukrainian counter-offensive that was supposed to take place somewhere in that region. But by the same token, the Russians are saying it serves Ukrainian purposes for various reasons, as well. At this point, is there any viable investigation that can happen to really determine this? Or are we going to just have to deal with the consequences and move on and then also continue to look for this Ukrainian offensive?

ROBBINS:
It’s interesting. Erdogan, Turkey’s Erdogan, offered to Zelenskyy this week, the creating a international commission like the Black Sea grain commission to investigate what happened. I’m skeptical that nobody has a particular interest. There’s a very pressing reason why that was created. Just to get food out. I would suppose that the Ukrainians are going to want to stick to their story that the Russians are responsible and the Russians are going to want to stick to their story that the Ukrainians are responsible.

The real focus should be immediately on getting help for all those people who’ve been displaced and cleaning up the disastrous environmental damage. How much agricultural production losses there should be something that we’re also going to have to wonder about. Ukraine is such an important source of food. It’s just one more disaster in the midst of a disastrous war.

MCMAHON:
Given that I think the disproportionate impact seemingly on Ukraine-proper Ukrainians, it does make it hard to believe the Ukrainians would’ve been behind this explosion, although, as you said, it could have been something else that resulted in this happening after all sorts of months of stress in that area.

ROBBINS:
Except, I don’t think, in the midst of a war crazy things happen. I’m not suggesting that the Ukrainians did it. But, I think it’s far too early for us to try to figure this out because crazy things happen in the midst of war.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, I agree. I was just going to add that the focus should be on helping the people in most in need, that it’s just devastating to see so far what has been the impact. You have the typical actors that get involved to try to help. UN coordinated agencies, western governments and not Russia. And not a lot of Russia’s allies involved in trying to help the people in this region. That speaks volumes, as well. It’s something that one hopes would come up more when issues get debated at the UN Security Council, like this one has been this week. That there is a humanitarian response that’s necessary that should be overriding the fact that there are countries at war and so forth. And yet it’s usually one side that follows through on this and the other gets a pass.

ROBBINS:
There are all these reports of shelling in regions where relief efforts are supposed to be taking place. A lot of charges that Russian forces are shelling and some charges from the Russian side that Ukrainian forces are shelling. Incredible violation of international humanitarian law if indeed this is going on. Certainly, in addition to the need for humanitarian relief, somebody does need to get to the bottom of this. This is a war crime, to destroy civilian infrastructure and to disrupt basic lives of so many people here. We need to eventually figure out who caused this. There need to be monitors on the ground, as well. But, in the midst of a war like this, probably going to be slow to happen.

MCMAHON:
There tends to be a pattern in being able to assign responsibility and then get a side to pay for it. I’m thinking about the first Gulf War where Saddam Hussein’s forces torched Kuwait, set on fire oil wells. There were these incredible images of just these black clouds, as Iraqi forces withdrew. Iraq ended up having to pay for that. They had a very long and lengthy list of payments to make, using oil revenues in particular, and that were presided over the UN. We can go down the whole rabbit hole there about what happened with that set of UN administered payments and humanitarian program and so forth. But, the bottom line is that there was blame assigned and there were payments made by a country that was not in a position to be able to block in any way, whereas I think Russia could effectively block the responsibility for paying.

ROBBINS:
Yeah, I was thinking about that extraordinary environmental damage that Saddam Hussein did. He also opened the spigots into the Persian Gulf. I actually drove through Kuwait after he torched all those oil fields. First of all, it was, I hope I never end up in hell, but it was as close to my imagination of what hell would look like. I have to this day, a white shirt, which has little pin dots because the air was so filled with burning oil. It was an extraordinary disaster. He said he was going to do it. People are the ones who pay the price for this. These are the willingness of dictators to destroy the lives of civilians, and this is why international humanitarian law exists. What’s happening in Ukraine day after day. This is just one of the most visual of it that we’re seeing. But, this is a daily event in Ukraine.

MCMAHON:
Yeah. As you say, you cannot let up the pressure on trying to get to the bottom of it. To be continued. That’s our look at the turbulent world next week. Here are some other stories to keep an eye on. Montenegro holds parliamentary elections. The Oslo Freedom Forum on human rights takes place in Norway. And, Russia’s St. Petersburg International Economic Forum takes place.

ROBBINS:
Please subscribe to The World Next Week on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and leave us a review while you’re at it. We really do appreciate the feedback. The publications mentioned in this episode, as well as a transcript of our conversation are listed on the podcast page for The World Next Week on cfr.org. Please note that opinions expressed on The World Next Week are solely those of the host, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. 

Today’s program was produced by Ester Fang, with the Director of Podcasting Gabrielle Sierra. Special thanks to Sinet Adous for her research assistance. Our theme music is provided by Miguel Herrero and licensed under Creative Commons. This is Carla Robbins saying, so long.

MCMAHON:
And this is Bob McMahon saying goodbye and more than ever, be careful out there.